Slowly I started to lose weight and my clothes were getting too big on me to wear. Eventually I lost three stones in weight and was more motivated to look for work. I had realized that taking antidepressant pills does not help the problem. I decided to come off them slowly. For seven years I felt like that - who could I go and ask for help? I found it difficult to tell someone. That was the darkest place I have ever entered, and I made sure I would never be in that dark place like that again.
Philip developed asthma as well as Jamie. I did ask for both of them to be treated at the same hospital and continued every three months rather than every year. When Jamie started at the Catholic school full time I would give him his nebulizer, which was the one where I had to pump the air with my foot to release the air, in the morning before school and then go back to pick him up from school, bring him home to give him his lunch and recharge it again for the afternoon. So for a year I had to make three return trips to school five days a week.
I was not happy with the next-door neighbour because they got themselves a Doberman, the most ugly and aggressive dog I have ever come across. They made a shed in the yard for the dog to sleep in and he would walk around in circles all day. They never took him out for a walk, and he would poo in the yard. I had to be careful every time I opened the curtains in the boys’ bedroom in case the dog barked. It continually barked in an aggressive way day and night and early in the morning, and I didn’t sleep very well for worry that Philip and Jamie would not be able to sleep. I absolutely hated that dog - I have never liked dogs anyway.
One time I was looking over at their yard when the son purposely encouraged it to bark at the window. Can you imagine my rage? I quickly opened the net curtains and gave the man a dirty look - he looked shocked when he saw me! I assume he thought it was my boys. I wanted to something about it, but how was I to go about doing that? I am sure they didn’t care because they knew I would not be able to hear that dog, and my boys were suffering.
I did go to the neighbour who lived on the other side of them about the dog, because I knew she worked nights and slept through the day. I asked if the dog was bothering her and she said no, he was fine! We put up with that for five years, till one day a new neighbour moved in at the near end of the street. They’d only been there a week when they rang my door bell. At the door were two girls in their early 20s. They asked me if I would mind keeping the dog quiet! I quickly said ‘I don’t have a dog, it’s them next door,’ and pointed out the house to them. Within a week that dog disappeared - forever!
I believe I was taken advantage of because of my disabilities. These were the same people who said to me that they did not have phone when I asked them to call the police. I was so relieved when the dog went and even happier when they moved away! Now we have a nicer neighbour and no dog. The new neighbour, Mark, even told us when he was planning to have a party and promised to keep it quiet, which he did.
I never felt comfortable letting my boys play outside in the street. I would have to keep an eye out of the window all the time to make sure they were safe, because I could not hear anything if something did happen. One day after tea they went outside to play for about ten minutes after tea. I was in the kitchen washing up when a neighbour came to my house to tell me something had happened. She quickly took me around the corner and Philip came running to me in a shocked state to say Jamie had been hit by a car!
I ran out of the house so fast and found Jamie on the ground. I quickly picked him up. We were all in shock and I did not understand what I was being told. My neighbour explained that the man wanted to take us to hospital. I went home to lock the door and we all went in his car, and I remember none of us said a word. I never saw that man again. He was the one who had knocked Jamie over.
After being checked over by the doctor at the hospital we were told that thankfully Jamie was fine and only had bruises on his legs.
About two or three days later police officers came to our house, saying the accident had been reported. I was surprised, because I had not told them about it. I kept asking them to speak slowly, as I was not able to understand some things. Philip said the man who had hit Jamie had reported himself to the police. To this day I have never known the man’s name.
The church we attended asked if we would like to go as pilgrims to Lourdes, where sick and disabled people go every year to stay for a week of prayers. They asked us if we would like to go, all expenses paid, and I agreed to go to pray for my sons’ health. We stayed in a hotel overlooking the river. It was the first time on a plane for us, and the weather was beautiful all that week. We met wonderful people who were so willing to help us - it was a different world. My mother came with us. I have since been five times, sometimes with friends and with my mother twice.
I wanted my boys to do well in school and never missed attending parents’ evenings to discuss their schoolwork and any school plays they were in. My father came along for support and was interested in how they were doing. When they were at secondary school I was thinking about going back to work and took a few courses at college for computer operating, but found them difficult and considered doing a teaching job with British Sign Language. As Keith Williams advised me, I decided I would go to college to gain Level Three NVQ teaching certificates and to build profiles. I found it difficult, but I was pleased to pass and did an assessment for Level Two British Sign Language at Durham University - I passed that too. I couldn’t wait to start to teach hearing people how to learn British Sign Language!
When I was at Kirby College for my NVQ teacher certificates, I would go one evening a week. The communicator for British Sign Language would arrived in the classroom and introduce herself to me and when the lecturer started to speak the communicator was lost! She couldn’t keep up with what the lecturer was saying. I realized that she was not qualified to do that job. For the whole evening I did not learn a thing. I got in touch with the communicator support department manager by using textphone and asked for another communicator, but the following week I arrived college to find there was no communicator at all. I had to go home as there was no point in staying.
For the third week at college the person in charge of organizing communicators was there with the same lady I had made my complaints about. She had to interpret my complaints to the manager! I had to say she was useless and I was lost in the classroom for her to translate. I knew the man used to be a gas fixer and I told him he should stick to that job! I was angry, as he could not understand British Sign Language himself. How he got that job is beyond me.
The fifth time I arrived at college I finally got someone who was a little bit better, but only because that communicator had had some experience with deaf people. I needed to be able to understand and learn to create a profile for my qualifications for my future as a teacher. I would have preferred a registered qualified interpreter NVQ level six, as they are excellent and very professional. College usually uses communicators because it’s cheaper. Universities should use highly-qualified interpreters.
I was offered one evening a week teaching at the deaf club, which was only ten minutes’ walk from my house - very handy. Philip and Jamie were able to look after themselves for two hours now - Jamie was almost 15 years old. Sometimes I could keep an eye on them at the park opposite the deaf club upstairs where I was working, and I could see them playing football.
The very first evening going to work I was very excited and nervous at the same time, but looking forward to it. Fifteen students arrived and sat around in a half circle and my co- ordinator introduced me to all the students, telling them I was deaf and giving a brief explanation about the course, which was to take 30 weeks, with exams at the end of the term. Then she left. There I was starting to teach fifteen students British Sign Language and I had no idea what I was going to be paid!
Firstly I would have flip charts. I would write ‘Hello’ using my right hand with palm facing toward the students and going around in small circles. Then all the students did the same, all at the
same time. Then I would have them do it one by one, then for the next one I would write ‘How are you?’ I would then show them first by putting both my hands on my chest and slowly moving out with my hands away to the right hand shape and mouth movement at the same time. I had to be careful as there are many basic hand shapes, for example flat hand, open hand, clawed hand, fist, closed hand, bent hand, cupped hand and so on. There’s also pointing, movement and facial expressions to show emotions like angry, excited, jealous, sorry and so on.
I would teach and show the alphabet to each student first, then they would watch me, then copy me. Once I had made sure everyone understood clearly, I would hand out copy alphabet sheets and the students would learn how to finger-spell their names. By the end of the class each student should be able to sign hello and then finger-spell their names.
During my time teaching, my coordinator-manager asked me if I would like to go for an interview. I agreed, in the end. The interviews were delayed and I ended up being interviewed at the same time as another woman. We sat down and he took out a pen and paper and asked me what I did at work, and I told him. The other lady said ‘I work in prison and teach’. Then he asked me about the Mayor, and I remembered a poster I had been looking at while I was waiting and said that the Mayor considered our health and well-being. I also said he had been to the deaf centre a few times meeting with deaf people, and there were many photographs all around the walls of the Mayor with deaf people who had done well with their exams on computer courses. He was delighted with me for mentioning that, and while I was answering his questions he was writing everything down.
The other woman became quite annoyed, as he seemed to be asking me more questions about the Mayor than my job. I was really glad that I had seen that poster!
When I saw my coordinator at work the following week and I told her all about it she could not believe it and could not understand why is was important that I had to answer these questions. I found the whole thing unbelievable. The Mayor was more important to them than learning about my job! In fact the Mayor used to be a policeman and had been sacked from his job for making deals with a drug dealer – and today he still is Mayor!
CHAPTER SIX
Into the employment jungle
In 2004 they introduced Job Seekers’ Allowance. I was on income support and could not understand why I received a letter to attend the Job Centre and see a Disability Employment Adviser. I was confused as we could not communicate because I didn’t have an interpreter, and the DEA did not know what to do. I wrote down on a piece of paper that I was working and was told that I might have more classes. He shook his head as if to say I could not. I was told to come again in two weeks’ time. At the next appointment he wrote a note saying I would have a different Disability Employment Adviser next time, pointing at a woman who was sitting at her desk. This woman could sign a little, but I never got an interpreter while I was with her. She too shook her head as if to say ‘well you can’t work’.
I was advised to see someone from the Citizen’s Advice Bureau, so I made an appointment there. They arranged for an interpreter and I explain that the DEA was not helping me to find work or advising me about my teaching job. They arranged for me to attend the CAB again, and they explained that because I was on Incapacity Benefit because of my disabilities and depression, I would have to write to the doctor to agree that the doctor would be happy to help me, which meant changing benefit to replacing therapeutic rules with new permitted work rules that would enable me to work and claim job seekers’ allowance. So I was allowed to work.
I explained what had happened to my mother, who was pleased for me and said she would go with me. When I went along with my mother she explained the situation to Dr Smith, but he flatly refused to write a letter to allow me to work or confirm that I was disabled, because he said there was nothing wrong with me. I could not believe I had been refused. I got very upset.
We decided to go to the CAB again, and when we arrived there my mother explained what had happened at the surgery with Dr Smith. The solicitor could not believe that the doctor had refused my request and was very angry. She said the doctor had no right to refuse and she would write him a letter.
Then to my surprise I received a letter from Dr Smith which said: ‘This patient of mine, who is profoundly deaf, carries out part-time work on two evenings per week in order to teach sign language. This work has a mainly therapeutic element to her in that she gains benefit from passing on skills to others, which she knows from personal experience will benefit the deaf community as a whole. I understand that this is paid work and that it is likely to prevent her from being able to claim full benefits for her own disability. I would be grateful if the obvious practical therapeutic benefits of her part-time work could be taken into consideration. Yours sincerely, Dr R Smith.’
YES! I had to read the letter twice! That letter confirmed that I was disabled and needed the job for therapeutic reasons which would help my mental health. I was very pleased, although I was warned that I might have to pay £13 for the letter. However I never did receive a bill.
I then went back to see the Disability Employment Adviser. I was about to explain about therapeutic permitted work and the B7 form, but I had not finished saying what I wanted to say when she quickly said ‘Oh yes, this is form B7’. She got up and went over to a cupboard with piles of different forms and gave me a form B7. The whole time I had been attending the Job Centre that cupboard behind her had held those B7 forms, and she had never mentioned them.
So what is the Disability Employment Adviser’s job? It was so important for me as a deaf person to be working and seeking employment at the same time, to be able to show something on my CV and to show the employers that I was capable of full- time employment. It had made me realise that it was not difficult for the Disability Employment Adviser to behave like that, because nothing was black and white and nothing was ever written down on paper.
I was then pleased to be given three more classes. I continued to enjoy them and was always looking forward to them. Teaching enabled me to save up a bit of money, and I was hoping to get full-time employment. I am not sure why, but the Disability Employment Adviser advised me to go to disabled forums to look for work with other people with different disabilities on Thursdays, and when I went I was told to look in the newspaper for jobs and look for work on the computer - not very much help to me really.
I never went back to that place again because I felt I was not getting any help or gaining anything by going there. I told the Disability Employment Adviser that the disabled forum was not suitable for me and was not helping me, and I thought it was a waste of time for me to keeping going. She did not know what to say - she just said ‘I was a bit worried about that’.
About two weeks later she told me that there was a job at Rede House, which was being opened up for business. It was office work without the telephone, and training would be given for eight weeks. I said I was interested in working in an office as I had done it before. She gave me an application form, but there was no advice or extra help with it. I need help with filling in the application form because it needed to be accurate. I asked my sister for help with it.
On the day of attending the interview I made a lot of effort and looked very smart, but I was excited and nervous at the same time. I must have been the first candidate at nine o’clock, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. That interpreter was more like a communicator. She said she was just learning to do level three British Sign Language, yet I needed a level six NVQ registered interpreter! But what could I do? Nothing - the interview was just five minutes away. I just had to go ahead with the interview.
The two employers both gave me that look as if they had never seen a deaf person before. I felt the interview went well however, because I was able to answer the questions. But I still felt uncomfortable with that interpreter and I certainly was not well pleased with her because she said quite a few times, ‘sorry, I don’t understand’. I would have to repea
t it, or she would say to the employee, ‘Can you say that clearly?’ or ask me what I was trying to say, which is totally unacceptable.
I had to wait for a month before I received a letter to say I had not got the job. I was very upset and sick at the thought of returning to the Job Centre. I told the Disability Employment Adviser that she was wrong to book an interpreter who was still learning for an interview, and she did not know what to say. Then I asked her to call them and ask why I had not got the job. She didn’t really want to call them, but she did, and they told her that the interpreter was not very good – so I had not got the job because of the interpreter!
I had said during the interview that I would need an interpreter for eight weeks’ training. It was within my rights to ask this, under the Disability Discrimination Act. She did not know what to do or say, so she did nothing. She made no attempt to persuade the employers that I was capable of doing the job, or explain about my rights under the Act. It was obvious that she hadn’t got a clue.
I could not believe it when four weeks after that interview the Disability Employment Adviser advised me to go to the open day of the same company that had refused to give me the job! I thought I would have to try again so I went along, only to find that I had to sit in a room full of people with a lady making speech for an hour using pictures on a projector. Why was I forcing myself to sit through that? Everyone was making notes and putting their hands up to ask questions. I was absolutely lost. When we looked around the offices I felt sick, because I saw the two people who had interviewed me and they did not know where to look when they saw me. I saw the computers on the desk without the telephone, which would have been perfect for me.
As I was leaving I picked up an application form on my way out - I did not stay long. Again I asked my sister to help fill in the same application form and hoped and pray for another interview, but it never came. What did the Disability Employment Adviser do? Nothing.
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